Meus Parem Locus

With J away it's been fairly quiet.  With the winter locked in and grey skies and cold winds it's been downright maudlin.  This is the longest we've been apart from each other and there's still more than a week to go.  The odd phone call and text, although welcome, do not reduce the feeling of loss.  Seeing happy pictures on Facebook provide both happiness and a bit of "poor me" at the same time.

The excitement of my impending holiday (without J) is somewhat diminished as I realise that just a few weeks separate his arrival and my departure.  We knew this ages ago of course but the reality of it has become a lot more apparent since he left.

LOL maybe it's the red wine bringing me down a little. Or maybe it's end of a three day weekend and back to work tomorrow I go, knowing that the only person in there that I really connected with finished last week and now I've got no one to vent to, or go grab a coffee with.

Another weekend in Melbourne finishes, and another period of wistful longing to move there begins.  I keep banging on about it to everyone - I'm always asked the question WHY I love it so much and have always answered with the same broad statements without actually really thinking it out.   This time I went with a view to try and figure out the reasons with a little more specific clarity.   I've tried to separate the tangible from the subjective, but I may have mixed this a little as the crossover can be vague (like that last sentence)

Specific

1. City Design: I love the CBD and the extended inner-city grid system.  I love the wide tree lined boulevards and the ease with which they flow and integrate with trams and cars alike
2. Architecture: a mix of old & stately, and new & daring.  Grand old buildings restored and maintained sit comfortably beside or under challenging and interesting structures and shapes that provide visual stimulation at most CBD streets.   Inner city suburban grandeur mixes with funkier & trendy shabby chic with ease and style
3. Trams: love them love them love them
4. Parks & Trees: they are dotted around everywhere and lush and green.  I am aware that Julian Clary also liked this feature of Melbourne, and would like to disassociate myself from his reasons for admiration :)
5. Climate: I like real seasons.  I know a lot of Australians don't seem to get that, but I like my summers to be warm or hot and my winters to be cool or COLD.  I like the visible changes to my environment in the transition seasons of Spring and Autumn.   It grounds me.   

Non-Specific

1. Vibe: yes I know it's a cliché for Melbourne but the reality is it is there and easy to find.  It's not self conscious.  It's not try-hard.  And I pick it up and feel it whenever I am there.
2. Social: another cliché perhaps, but the small bars, laneway restaurants and intimate cocktail lounges are soooooooooooo much more appealing to me than loud, brash booze barns.   I'm too old to get excited about standing in some huge crowded bar with ear bashing music that I don't like, yelling to my friends and getting bumped around by the constantly moving and shifting crowd.  
3. People: don't seem to be so self obsessed or cliquey.  (this is a very subjective view I know - but it's just how I perceive it.   Attitude is noticeable by it's absence in my experience).  Theatre, live music and comedy festivals engage the citizens in a way not seen by me here.
4. Ease of movement: using trains, trams and buses to get around, the city and it's features just seem to be so accessible.

Of course, the undercurrent throughout all of this is an implied comparison to my current home of Sydney.  And of course, that does feature in a lot of the points above, and I could now rattle off a load of reasons why I am over Sydney and my frustrations with the city and State of NSW in general.  But that would be no surprise to anyone so suffice to say there are a few key reasons why I don't think I've ever really connected with this place.  

First - I'm not a beach person (mostly).  One of the key reasons for living in Sydney is the amazing beaches right on our doorstep.  But this has never been a drawcard for me.  Second - it's too pocketed.  There are parts of this city that I love to spend time in but getting there/getting back is a nightmare or bloody expensive.  Third - whilst Sydney has probably the most beautiful natural harbour of any city in the world, unless you live near it (rich) or use a ferry to get across it regularly (lucky), it's somewhat too easily forgotten.  And beyond its glamour and appeal lies a hotch potch of dead CBD streets and raucous superpubs around The Rocks or George Street that attract unattractive groups.

And yes maybe I would like a change.  How many further reasons or analysis should one engage in before a decision can be made on a reasonable level of consideration?  

So a great weekend in many respects, not least of which forcing me to define a direction and point of view on this topic which has lingered with me for years.  Here's hoping I can now activate this ambition someday.

Iceland makes the right decision

If I choose to invest my money with a foreign-owned institution, and that institution should subsequently go bankrupt, am I therefore entitled to demand the citizens of the related foreign nation owe me my money back?   Citizens who for the vast part had nothing whatsoever to do with the business dealings of the institution?   

Hi there, and welcome to todays' burning issue for discussion. :-)

That's the question that Iceland has once again grappled with, and once again has given a resounding NO to the answer.  And I 100% agree with that decision. Where should the buck stop?  Liability is strewn all over the disastrous schmozzle that was the Icesave scheme in the UK and Netherlands - from the customer who accepted the risks (consciously or not) of placing their money with a foreign bank to the UK & Dutch governments that allowed the bank with a horrific risk profile to operate in their country, to the Icelandic government for failing to regulate the bank and it's ridiculous extravagances at home.   

Nowhere in this jumble of responsibility do the citizens or taxpayers of a country appear.  So I applaud the Icelanders for their two fingers up to the system again.   They will not be spared the shit that the system will force them to endure as a result, but the expectation that a nation should just rollover and "take it" because "that's what should be done" in the eyes of the other countries is indefensible.  

If only Icelandic President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, who forced the legislation to a referendum, could have done the same for Ireland...

A week passes but the aching does not.  I will revisit the dentist on Monday - whilst the gums are very gradually healing the bizarre (and extremely painful) toothaches from nearby untouched teeth are debilitating.  I have not had pain like this since I don't remember when.  My brain tumour operation some 6 years ago was a breeze by comparison.

So last night I decided to hell with it all and went out for a a Friday night beers with friends session - my first since the operation.  I tried to use alcohol as a pain reliever but failed to drink the amount required.  With aching returning I took my leave early and came home to knock back two panadeine forte and some water.    Apparently famed for aiding deep sleep, panadeine forte do not provide such relief to me in general, but I assumed with a few drinks this might finally happen.  It did not.

I lay in bed in a hallucenogenic haze for a few hours before finally drifting off.  I dreamt weird stuff (as you do) including Windows error messages blipping up warning me about things related to my life - some true, some not.  I even got up at one stage and tried some to put some Oil of Clove on the sore teeth (an ancient remedy apparently) but it made little impact.  And, so I soldier on...

Listen to me - you would swear there's nothing else happening in the world.   All moan moan poor me.  But the thing is, when something like this happens in our first world, safe & protected easy existences, they do become all encompassing for the mind and body.  And my worry is that there is only so much ibuprofen, codeine and paracetamol this mind and body can take.

Doped up on anaesthesia and lingering effects of the sedative, I left the dentist on Thursday afternoon in good form, thinking how easy it was to get a nasty wisdom teeth extraction operation done these days (not that I have had one before, but you hear the stories).  Of course, once the said drugs strted to wear off, that's when the real fun begins.  

I'm not really very good with pain.  At the slightest hint of a headache or some such I reach for the panadol and it's pain be gone.  But this is quite something else.  Apparently it peaks around the 48 hour post op period, so I can expect to be in quite a mire about 4:30pm today.

With any extraction (these were my first) there is also this sinister post-op threat of developing a rather hideous sounding condition called "dry socket" where the gum does not heal properly.  To avoid this, all manner of precautions must be observed, because from what I gather from the internet, avoidance and precautions are far, far more preferable than dealing with dry socket.   The only problem is you don't know whther you have it or not until about 3-4 days after the operation.  So either way you live with pain, fear and annoying precautions.

But, as the man once said, this too shall pass.  

My next appointment (for the right side of my mouth - two more extractions and a filling) was booked for this Friday, but I rang yesterday and put it off to the end of April.   This morning I mix my paracetamol and ibuprofen with glee and finally achieve some temporary relief from the affliction.  I'm no Hercules

MAYBE I'm just not in the mood to blog these days.  It's been ages I know.  I wonder is social media sucking my creative urge by being so damn available all the time.   I even googled some meme's online to see if I could find something to draw me in.  But they are all so very much the same and rather dull - they failed to entice.   

I wonder as you get older do you find it harder to be excited about things.  I can't remember the last time I was really truly excited - well I can I guess - but it was was soooo very long ago and I haven't been able to get so excited since.  I want to be excited about something.  I love being excited for someone else about something, and it's such a disappointment to me if they don't express the same engagement.  

Nowadays when I try to plan something that 10 years ago I would have been keenly anticipating, all I see is the hassle involved and why would I bother really.   Am I turning into my parents already...  When I think of going home this year I do get a bit excited but then along comes the big wet rag of how I can afford it, what time I can take off, how much holidays I have, and how else I should probably be spending or investing the cost.   I used to be so much easier about this sort of stuff.

Speaking of stuff, that's another hassle.  I have too much of it.  Simply WAY too much.   I look at my (not exactly huge) collection of about 200 CD's that I have bought over the years yet not reached for a single one in the last 5.  Books everywhere - good books, boring books, books I've started but never finished, books I never should have got in the first place.  Just there.  On the shelf. In the cupboard.  There because I've accumulated it.  There because I feel bad if I threw it away.  There because I never got off my arse to bring it some secondhand bookshop and sold it on or given it away.  

It's for this reason that I think I never got round to buying an iPad.  It's fun and nicely designed and compellingly tactile, and I love that in a gadget.   But what would I need it for?  I have my computer, I have my iPhone.  It's just more STUFF.   

Show me the iPad 10 or even 5 years ago and it would have been procured on the day of launch.  No further analysis required.  Why?  Because I would have been excited about it long before I got my hands on it.   And that just doesn't seem to happen anymore...

on 2010

I shouldn't blog when I am bored and haven't really got anything else to do... 

Just remembered to put a wash on.  Glad that's done.  Anyway... it's been a while since I've gone online here so it's due anyway.  

And 2010 ends on a good note all up.  I may now be 36. I may have received a L'Oreal anti-ageing and anti-sagging kit from my partner for my birthday.  I may have sprayed tomato salsa all over my favourite white t-shirt at breakfast this morning.  But I really can't complain.   It's been a quiet festive season really.  I did finally give in and put the Xmas tree up a few days before the day but beyond adding some rather cheap and combustible looking star-based decoration to the opposite wall that was the sum of my effort.  Xmas has never been a time of great cheer or celebration for me while I live in Australia - the best thing about it is some time off work.  Receiving such glorious pictures of snowbound Ireland only makes me more homesick.  Having only really experienced Irish snow as a young child, the fun and romantic nature of it is all I can recall.   Inconvenience and risk of injury/death are by the by...

So in 2010 I changed career for the better too.  And that was nicely summed up by the offer of an ongoing permanent position at my company on the day of my birthday, with a nice pay rise to boot.  I really didn't think I'd get that far, because for most of the year I was in anguish at my choice of such a stressful role, in anger at my overstating my previous experience and in debt because I wasn't being paid as much as my last (shit) job and had built up some ridiculous ongoing expenses.  But in early December the projects completed correctly and on time, and (only a liitle) over budget.  So I scraped by.  And I feel a lot better heading into the next year on it.

In 2010 I lost some friends and made some new ones.  Each instance was a somewhat of a mini-drama in itself, but I have no regrets either way.   The world of Facebook is fraught with the potential for misunderstandings or perceived insults or digs, and I've noted some - let's say connections - who either disappear suddenly or lock down their profiles in a paranoid chip-on-shoulder sniffy fit. Either of which can provide quite an insight and confirm some long-suspected issues.   I think everyone takes a while to figure out how they prefer to interact or deal with people - it's a pity that simple actions on a social network site can actually result in such negativity.   I'm as guilty as anyone, lest I be judged for my words.  So FB and it's impacts are currently limited to frippery only and will continue to be.

After a year of consolidating my expenses (keeping head above water - JUST) I am looking forward to a brighter future in 2011, with a return to normality.  I think a financial hangover from the previous 5 years hit me unexpectedly while I was living in a happy financial bubble (hmmm this sounds rather familiar) and I needed to tighten my belt pronto and rein in the excess.   Whilst my belt may have metaphorically tightened, it needed loosening in the physical sense during the year too.... so fit and healthy with be my mots de l'année for 2011.  I already have a great plan for it.  Drawn it all up. Went and bought all the right accessories and clothes.   Got a diet plan in place.  It's all there.  Just waiting to be activated on Jan 1st.  Or maybe Jan 2nd.   Well, we'll see. But soon

Anyone that knows me personally knows that I am a calm, tolerant and overall patient person (umm NOT! but I have mellowed over the years :-)    But I am typing this on a Sunday afternoon, listening to some (unwanted) Hed Kandi on the computer speakers, in order to drown out the surround sound of screaming babies coming into my home. From multiple sources. There is no real escape.  

When I bought this place 4 years ago, the complex was more or less baby free.  I have no problem with babies themselves (they are what they are) but I resent the recent influx of young couples and their fresh offspring into a high-density residential complex and being completely fucking ignorant to their neighbours or the reality of living in such a development.  My apartment is on the fifth floor overloking a small garden plaza and across to the other building beyond the tree.  It's not exactly on top of each other but it's fairly compact and space efficient, as urban city suburbs do.  It means that if anyone is making loud noise, we all have to share in it.  

Most of the time it's just background stuff, and in some ways, quite pleasant.  The complex is well managed (lord knows I pay for it to be) and if someone is having a party or playing music too loud at night, any resident can call security and make a noise complaint, which generally works by turning down the music a bit and CLOSING THE WINDOW OR BALCONY DOOR.   

So, NO, it is NOT appropriate to let your newborn scream for ages in a cot beside an open window, or to take said child in your arms onto the balcony for him or her to share it's shrieking bawls to the other 600 or so poor bastards who have to listen to it and just accept it.

Oh, it's just stopped.  Holding my breath....

No, it's back. Again.

These last few weeks have been the most intense in my working life.  It's not that I haven't been stressed at work before (I have, although I expressed it rather immaturely I know) but I've never felt under this much pressure behind the working desk before.  Running two projects simulateneously, with two diverse teams and two diverse outcomes, both actually launching on the same day in November was not something that I was too concerned about a few months ago.  But now, on my sanity day off that I have been planning for months (and spent a lot of it on the phone to work anyway) I can really see the weight of stress that has weighed upon me.

I have to say I have impressed myself during the period.  I cannot count the number of times in another energy sapping meeting that my brain was actually freezing and a voice inside my head was screaming "STOPIT! STOP IT!!  JUST RESIGN!  YOU CAN"T COPE WITH THIS!!!".  The voice was muddled with another one yelling "YOU CAN'T DO THIS!  WHY DID YOU THINK YOU CAN DO THIS?  YOU'RE GOING TO FAIL!". Thankfully, there was another (although fainter) voice that told me to "Stick with it.  Keep yourself together. It can't last" which won out on each panic stricken moment.   

There is a tendency to walk into a new company in a new role (as I did as a business project manager in February this year with my employer) and for everyone around you to (a) assume you already know exactly what you are doing; and (b) assume you already know exactly how everything works in the company - the written and unwritten rules - and for you not to be in breach of either (a) or (b).  If you do, then you get chaos.  And I've been managing quite a bit of that lately.   

Despite the fact I've been pulling 12 hour days, the odd weekend and on-call availability (for a role which I am neither remunerated properly nor incentivised to go the extra mile) there have been some good points. Firstly, I've learnt my limits of tolerance, and my strategy for coping with horrendously intense and stressful people and situations.  Secondly, I've gained an enormous amount of experience and skill along the way - stuff which I had done before but never at this level nor with this commitment.  Third and lastly, I've learned that once I walk out that office door of an evening, it's my time and I need to make the most of it despite the nightmares of the day.  I'm not paid to think outside of work.  

So, this weekend myself and J rented a little house overlooking the Blue Mountains, and I took Monday (today) off work despite the pressure to be at work ("How can you take a day off now??"  Bollix).  While it rained and galed in Sydney, the sun shone and the birds twittered in our back garden.  Phones were out of signal, tv reception was poor and the wine was lovely.  Musing through old musty books and antique shops, having breakfast or lunch in tiny local cafes and just talking shite and having a laugh, gazing in the window of estate agents at the lovely little houses for sale and fantasising about buying a weekender - it was brilliant.   And just what we needed.   Tomorrow is another day, and will probably be like the rest of them, but I know I can deal with it just a bit better now.  

Spring is in the air in Sydney.  The mood has lifted amongst the populace, as a hint of ambient warmth finally starts to accompany the bright sunlight and the clear blue skies that are a general feature of Winter.  Birds are making their presence felt - especially at 4am outside my fucking bedroom window - and all is right with the world.  

A general election has come and gone since my last post - normally a topic that would generate much output from me - but this time I kept myself distanced.  As time goes on I realise that many certainties or assumptions I took for granted over the years are changing, or indeed were never really there to begin with.  Friends I know and love dearly can hold wildly differing views on many topics that I had previously assumed to be in keeping with my own.  Passionate conversations about the state of politics in the nation - once a mainstay of my serious conversation topics - has been mostly avoided or more delicately handled.  I have shied away from unleashing the potential debates on more than one occasion, finding it easier to sit back and keep my views or opinions to myself (not like me at all at all).  Maybe I couldn't easily find a position to begin with - given the horrifically shite choices put in front of me for election, but I was never less than surprised when I heard the level of passion and anger in the voices of those around me.

I'm working harder these days than I think I ever have done in the past.  Not necessarily longer hours (although lunch hour is mostly a thing of the past) but in intensity.  My brain is being worked like never before on a daily basis, not to mention my composure control and self-perception demons.  It's good in many ways - I'm not complaining - but I do find that for the first time in a very long time I am indeed mentally exhausted at the end of the day and find it hard to enthuse about anything after walking out of the office door of an evening.  Maybe Spring will help me with this - if I can ever get a good night's sleep without that fucking bird outside the window :-)